On June 27, 1997, NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft flew by an asteroid named 253 Mathilde.
NEAR, which stands for Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, launched in 1996 to go orbit another asteroid named 433 Eros, and it flew by Mathilde along the way. The spacecraft was hibernating in a low-power state for nearly 16 months before the mission's scientists woke it up to look at Mathilde. It whizzed by the asteroid going over 22,000 miles per hour and came within 750 miles of its surface. The flyby lasted about 25 minutes, and the spacecraft took hundreds of photos along the way – enough to image 60 percent of the asteroid's surface. Scientists were stoked about the quality of the images from this super-fast flyby. They found that Mathilde had a super lumpy and irregular shape, and with a totally battered surface, this asteroid likely had a violent history of collisions with other rocky objects floating around the solar system.
NEAR, which stands for Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, launched in 1996 to go orbit another asteroid named 433 Eros, and it flew by Mathilde along the way. The spacecraft was hibernating in a low-power state for nearly 16 months before the mission's scientists woke it up to look at Mathilde. It whizzed by the asteroid going over 22,000 miles per hour and came within 750 miles of its surface. The flyby lasted about 25 minutes, and the spacecraft took hundreds of photos along the way – enough to image 60 percent of the asteroid's surface. Scientists were stoked about the quality of the images from this super-fast flyby. They found that Mathilde had a super lumpy and irregular shape, and with a totally battered surface, this asteroid likely had a violent history of collisions with other rocky objects floating around the solar system.
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TechTranscript
00:00On this day in space.
00:03In 1997, NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft flew by an asteroid named 253 Matilda.
00:09NEAR, which stands for Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous,
00:12launched in 1996 to go orbit another asteroid named 433 Eros,
00:16and it flew by Matilda along the way.
00:18The spacecraft was hibernating in a low-power state for nearly 16 months
00:22before the mission's scientists woke it up to look at Matilda.
00:25It whizzed by the asteroid, going 22,000 miles per hour,
00:28and came within 750 miles of its surface.
00:31The flyby lasted about 25 minutes,
00:33and the spacecraft took hundreds of photos along the way,
00:35enough to image 60% of the asteroid's surface.
00:38Scientists were stoked about the quality of the images from this super-fast flyby.
00:42They found that Matilda had a super-lumpy and irregular shape,
00:45and with a totally battered surface,
00:47this asteroid likely had a violent history of collisions
00:49with other rocky objects floating around the solar system.
00:52And that's what happened on this day in space.
00:55NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology